I'm continuing my sporadic series of introductions to regional folk musicians and others. All have performed at Tucson Meet Yourself; all have passed on.
Let’s start with the best known if these, Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero. He was born in a Tucson barrio on December 24, 1916, and died in Rancho Mirage, California, on March 17, 2005. A long journey, in many senses. Along the way, Lalo became a professional singer and composer, wrote around seven hundred songs, recorded many of them, received the National Heritage Award and the National Medal for the Arts, among other honors, and earned the title "Father of Chicano Music." Some trip!
While Lalo’s professional career started in his hometown of Tucson, most of it was spent in Southern California and on the road touring. For years he ran the highly successful East Los Angeles Nightclub, "Lalo’s Place." He then moved to Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs and spent 27 years as the solo entertainment at the "Las Casuelas Nuevas" restaurant.
After he finally "retired," he continued to entertain, coming to Tucson several times in his last years. He is permanently with us in a large photo mural in the Broadway Underpass, strolling Congress Street in the 1930s with his friend and fellow musician, Gregorio Escalante. I wave when I drive by.
But none of this really tells us why I’m writing about Lalo Guerrero. Although he was a superlative musician and entertainer, it was as a composer that he really made his mark on the world. Lalo wrote cumbias, waltzes, romantic songs, corridos, and comic songs. He wrote mariachi and swing and boogie-woogie. He wrote in English and Spanish, with occasional side trips into the Pachuco argot of the urban borderlands. He wrote parodies of popular songs – "Pancho Lopez" was the first and most famous. Tucson audiences knew him from his performances in his later years of such classics as "Tacos for Two," and "Lucila.” He often wrote with a social consciousness which disguised under a thick layer of humor.
His "Pancho Claus" for example, was a funny parody on "A Visit from St. Nicholas." However, the household Lalo describes contains a huge, exuberant extended Mexican family, far different from the peaceful folks of the original poem. There is no way the uptight gringo saint is going to visit this madhouse! So Lalo produces Pancho Claus, from south of the border, who drives past the porches wishing a "Merry Christmas to all, and to all Buenas Noches!"
You can hear Lalo's music on youtube and by googling him, read his autobiography, and enjoy contact with a truly bicultural artist who did much to reshape the soundscape of our borderlands.
Lalo's autobiography is available and highly readable. Lalo: My Life and Music, by Lalo Guerrero and Sherilyn Meece Mentes. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2002.
